David Dobrik, internet personality and YouTube vlogger, kicked off his career with Vine — a social media platform known for short, 10-second videos —  before starting his entertaining vlogging videos on YouTube. After going viral and gaining fame in the past 11 years, he has become a well-known social media sensation. After a friend recommended we try out his morning routine featured on Vanity Fair’s YouTube channel, we decided that we wanted to try out his unique and weird routine — and see if it might hold the key to his popularity. 

Photo by Christina Labban

After snoozing for three hours, we got out of bed.

Dobrik starts his day by waking up at around 9 a.m. and going on his phone for roughly 45 minutes to check his social media and plan his day. Before actually getting out of bed, he has his first alarm ring at 6 a.m., which he snoozes every 20 minutes until it reaches 9 a.m. According to Dobrik, snoozing has the effect of making the time he sleeps feel longer. We, however, didn’t find this to be true: Those 20-minute snoozes felt more like 20 seconds, leaving us to wake up more groggy and irritated.  

Grace usually snoozes her alarms the same way Dobrik does every school day; she needs at least 15 alarms to actually wake up. Because of this, Dobrik’s method of waking up just gave her traumatic flashbacks of 7 a.m. school days, despite it being a weekend, when she typically wakes up peacefully at 9 a.m.

Photo by Christina Labban

We went on a morning run in Christina’s neighborhood that overlooks the city, embracing the mountains surrounding us.

After getting out of bed, Dobrik goes for a run — so we put on our running shoes and started out for a mile. To be honest, after almost a year of not running, we needed a couple of walking breaks. Eighth-grade miles didn’t prepare us for this jog. 

Besides that, though, we both enjoyed the run, since we got to take in the gorgeous view of the mountains around us. It’s safe to say we will be taking part in an occasional run on the weekends every month or two to keep our bodies moving.

Photo by Christina Labban

Christina is questioning Dobrik’s choice of shampoo: the Kids 3 in 1 Watermelon Wonder Suave.

After sweating from his morning run, Dobrik takes a morning shower using Kids 3 in 1 Watermelon Wonder Suave Shampoo. Only Christina took part in this part of the routine because we were at her house. It smelled just like watermelon toothpaste and her hair felt extremely moisturized while she was lathering it with the shampoo. Surprisingly, once she dried it, her hair was more voluminous and thicker than normal. 

However, she couldn’t get behind the childish smell, which made her feel like she was 5 years old. Dobrik said he’s been using it since he was a kid because it claimed to be “tear free.”

Photo by Christina Labban

We feel the effects of the Kids 3 in 1 Watermelon Wonder Suave Shampoo after showering!

Dobrik also brushes his teeth in the shower, which isn’t something Christina normally does. But in her opinion, it was definitely more efficient while saving some water and time. 

In addition, Dobrik includes some unique rituals in his shower routine. For one, he opens his mouth and lets the water from the shower head out into his mouth before turning off the water. Then, he waits until he hears the final drop of water from the faucet hit the bathtub floor to spit the water from his mouth into his hand. Immediately after, Dobrik lets the water drop from his hands, with the hope that it’s louder than the last drop that fell from the shower drain. 

These quirks made showering a little more interesting. 

Photo by Christina Labban 

I played Dobrik’s toothbrush game and made it on the first try.

After his shower, he plays the “toothbrush game,” where he tries to throw his toothbrush into the cup by the sink where it belongs. Dobrik seems to be extremely superstitious; if he makes the toothbrush in the cup, then he believes that he’s going to have a good day. Luckily for Christina, she made it on the first try.  

Photo by Grace Lin 

We pose with our hot tea. 

At around 10:30 a.m, Dobrik drinks tea. He claims to not particularly enjoy the taste of tea —  rather, the comfort from holding a warm drink in his hands is the main attraction. We made two cups of hot Earl Grey tea, and, just as Dobrik takes a lap around a pool table, we circled around our kitchen island while taking a sip.

Photo by Christina Labban 

We cut up our watermelon into cubes to sandwich it in between the bread.

As weird as it sounds, for breakfast, Dobrik enjoys munching on a slice of watermelon sandwiched between two slices of bread. While the soggy watermelon and dry bread combination seemed gross, we didn’t judge and decided to try it, hoping that it might taste good. Disappointingly, the flavors of sweet watermelon paired with the texture of crumbly bread only made us want to stop chewing and spit it all out. However, for the sake of completing this challenge, we persevered and swallowed the whole thing. It’s safe to say that we’ll never be doing that again.

Photo by Grace Lin

Dobrik motivated us to lock in and do our homework for a long 20 minutes.

At around 11 a.m., Dobrik normally conducts business meetings in his house with his assistant, but since we had no business to attend to, we unwillingly worked on our homework due the next school day, which proved to be slightly helpful, but also insanely boring.

All in all, Dobrik’s routine is a lot more productive than our morning bed-rotting sessions (where we scroll on TikTok for the entire morning) and it was a fun experience to take part in. His oddly specific yet productive routine proved to be useful. Even though it was a little quirky, it was fun to get active on an early Saturday morning. However, we think we only enjoyed it because we did it together. If we had to eat a watermelon sandwich after a long jog by ourselves, it wouldn’t have been as much fun.

Overall, we would rate Dobrik’s morning routine a 6 out of 10 Falcons. The weirdness of his watermelon obsession with his drive to workout and be productive made this routine a memorable, yet fun way to start our day. But would we do it again? Probably not.